Kuirlins are amphibious; they breath underwater when swimming, and in air when in their houses. Like some other creatures in Aquaria they can change form at will - in their case, from an aquatic non- legged form to a terrestrial form with short, powerful legs. In both forms they are excellent jumpers.

Kuirlins maintain the air in their dwellings by extracting dissolved oxygen from the water by a process using the kuirlin plants, which grow on and around their houses. Each house contains its own extraction apparatus, generally kept in the lower part of the building. Their spherical houses form loose semi-attached aggregations in several areas around and about the waters of Aquaria.

After the rescue of the town in Labyrinth Mod from the clutches of the cruel pearl mine octopus, the mayor felt so grateful to Naija that he commissioned a portrait of her from an artist friend. Here is the mayor relaxing in his house:

Sooooo...I've spent about the last three days just shotgunning this mod, since I realized I never actually got past the first area all those years ago (chalk it up to Mass Effect 3 coming out around that time...), so now I'm ready to give my full feedback!

(Note: I'm still not sure if I'm completely "finished" with the mod yet, since I'm still in the Wheel part but just got Fish Form...and that's about 5 and a half hours in, so I feel I gotta be coming up to the end soonish.)

Not sure if the original creator is still lurking on the forums or whatnot...but eh. Might as well throw my two cents into the fountain.

- The new areas look absolutely GORGEOUS. Especially the "Strange" area of the mod, which really looks like everything in a greenish-lilipad pond scaled up by about a thousand...even the parts of the pond we don't see. The microbe-looking things, the giant dragonflies, the huge tadpoles, the clusters of spores in little nets that make Naija giggle when you break the nets open...all of it looks so cool, and so beautiful. The mines were pretty cool, too, and I loved the attention to detail in the home waters. And the Depths part was equal parts dark/foreboding and bright/alien, especially the room with all the colored pods that had portals that led to different arenas. It reminded me of that alien dimensional thingy from Pacific Rim...which is pretty cool.

- I really liked this mod's approach to combat. In the main game (and in several other mods as well), your combat options for most of the game were Energy form...and that's about it, until you got Dual Form. All the other forms were more-or-less useless in combat, as the average player would just stick to Energy Form in combat scenarios and only switch to Beast/Nature/Sun form when the situation required it. In this mod, though, it's completely inverted: you're not given Energy Form until the tail end of the maze, but you're still given plenty of weapons up until then, like the Urchin Armor, or the Nature Form thorn plants. This forced me to try new things and keep experimenting, employing strategies I'd never use if I had Energy form from the start. Under fire from a Sea Dragon? Sing the Shield Song, dash and grab the beast while wearing the Urchin armor, and ride its back until it dies. Being chased by poisonous worms or relentless nautiluses? Switch to Nature Form, drop a cactus behind you, and laugh as they ram headfirst into the spiky thorns and die. Trapped in a room with lots of projectile-spitting, wall-crawling enemies? Switch to Beast Form and eat and eat and eat and eat...and get ammo for their abilities that you can unleash on the next big tough monster. It's all really rewarding, and helped me develop strategies that I'll bring with me into the main game.

-That said, however, the difficulty felt incredibly frustrating at times. This mainly has to do with how Aquaria handles death; if you die, you just get sent back to the last Save Point, all progress since then lost. And while the Save Points are plentiful in this mod...the tough, murderous enemies are even more plentiful. And all it takes is one mistake, one mistimed dash, one little projectile you never even noticed...and then bam. Game over. I found this incredibly frustrating, even with the generous save points, the generous food supplies, and the generous combat opportunities. And why, why, why, why, why, why, WHY are there giant worms in the beginning area?!? On that note: putting heavy-hitting, quick-acting, can-kill-you-in-a-minute-if-they-get-it enemies in Song Bulbs was just mean.

Overall, though, I liked the Labyrinth Mod. It's a lot more cerebral than other game mods I've played for other games, but I appreciated that. It's gorgeous, engaging, and for the most part, fun. Loved it!

Logged

"The Verse binds us, narrator and explorer. My story will become your own, and yours will become mine. You will live my life through my eyes...and you will learn the truth."

Thanks for the feedback, Joey – it made my day to know someone still played Labyrinth mod and liked it enough to give pretty detailed, generous feedback. As for the mod's difficulty, I think by the end I was somewhat influenced by F.genesis who was helping at that time with the scripts. And if you think this was hard, try playing his Meaty Mod!

Yep, I still check the forum fairly often, because I'm one of the folks working on the "Something Like a Sequel" mod. And I frequently lurk/hang out on the bit blot IRC channel as Fawpaw. We're approaching the completion of the first chapter of the sequel mod, so it's fun times.

Wow – five years on and Labyrinth Mod finally reached 1000 downloads! I almost missed it as I only check the stats on Bitly occasionally nowadays. The last download that put the number over the top was from Canada. I can only see a fraction of the stats that Bitly used to show since they reorganized, but extrapolating from past data the top countries for downloads after five years are the US, Russia, Germany, and Canada.

Making Labyrinth Mod still ranks among the most enjoyable and immersive projects I've ever engaged in. Kudos to Alex and Derek not only for making Aquaria (best game ever imo), but for providing the editor, allowing even amateur, non-programmers like myself to experience the fun of making a game.